Belief system drives 'Me and You'

Watching the end credits of "Me and You, Us, Forever" with a combination of relief and emptiness, I realized the film shows nothing of the collective character or personality that good films possess, regardless of their content. Everything here is flat and repetitive, because it's driven less by a creative conscience than a belief system.

Michael Blain-Rozgay portrays the main character, Dave, in "Me and You, Us, Forever."

Written and directed by Dave Christiano, who devised the faith-based TV series "7th Street Theater," this film focuses on an unhappy, 47-year-old divorced man (Michael Blain-Rozgay) who, perhaps not coincidentally, also is named Dave. I raise the point only because one of the end credits informs you the film is based on a true story.

While browsing in a library one sunny day, Dave comes across an old high school yearbook containing a few pictures that effectively set off a nostalgic obsession. He remembers Mary, a cute kid with a turned-up nose he summarily had dumped 30 years earlier. While he remembers their relationship lasted exactly two years, four months and 28 days, his recollection is sketchy in regard to reasons for the breakup.

His closest friend is Paul (Hugh McLean), a colleague at their North Carolina marketing firm. Paul is happily married, but he doesn't try to push Dave into a new match, instead suggesting he pray a lot and perhaps take group therapy at Southside Fellowship Church. When Dave and Paul discuss anything, from personal distress to job performance bonuses, references to Jesus and the will of God flow as nonchalantly through their sentences as if they were talking about traffic detours.

Dave attends one session at the church, where he openly laments the divorce and the unsatisfactory conditions under which he shares the parenting of two daughters with his promiscuous ex-wife. He doesn't want to go to any more sessions until he meets Carla (Stacey J. Aswad), who needs a friend because she, too, feels the pain of a love lost long ago.

Even though Carla is a breathtakingly beautiful woman who early on seems interested in him as a man, Dave decides he can pull himself out of post-divorce trauma only by reconnecting with Mary of yesteryear. Paul rightfully advises him what a dumb idea that is, and Carla suggests the same in a more kindly manner, but Dave takes his God-given performance bonus and buys airfare to upstate New York.

Aside from scattered good moments from Aswad and McLean, the acting in "Me and You, Us, Forever" is uniformly bad.

I don't know if Blain-Rozgay's career has had any notable highlights. He shouldn't regard this as one, certainly. Here, his delivery is as bland as his standard outfit of casual slacks and tieless dress shirt.